New York City schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, right, with Spain’s Queen Letizia, center, and a student.

Ballesteros/Zuma Press

In her weekly memo to principals, released Wednesday, the 71-year-old grandmother strikes a maternal note, saying that in the pursuit of increased rigor, “Sometimes I worry that we are putting too much pressure on ourselves and adding unnecessary stress to the lives of our teachers, students, and families.” Read More »

A fourth grade student is pictured in a classroom at the Talented and Gifted School for Young Scholars in East Harlem in September 2013.

Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal

The New York State Department of Education released half of the questions from spring’s standardized tests for children in grades three through eight on Wednesday, after parents and teachers demanded for months to see more examples.

The release included double the number of language arts and math questions that were made public last year. Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr., said the extra access aimed to help the public understand the breadth and depth of the Common Core standards that the new assessments were designed to measure.

Mr. King and the state Board of Regents have been staunch advocates for these standards, which supporters say are more clear, focused and rigorous than past expectations. Critics say the Common Core guidelines are too confusing and prescriptive, and they argue that teachers did not get enough training or textbooks to teach them since their adoption in 2010. Read More »

Results released Wednesday showed that 38% of American twelfth-graders scored at or above “proficient” in reading, and 26% did so in math in 2013 – roughly the same as in the last administration of the test four years earlier. Proficient means showing solid academic performance and success with difficult material. Flat results came despite intensive efforts to improve achievement to help American students compete with peers abroad.

The test, given to a representative sampling of public and private school students nationwide, is widely known as the “Nation’s Report Card.” Read More »

Parents, teachers, and school administrators gathered outside Public School 321 in Brooklyn on Friday morning to protest the state English Language Arts standardized tests that had been administered to students this week.

Teachers at the popular Park Slope school criticized the test questions for being confusing and, in some cases, possibly having multiple correct answers. They also described the three days of testing itself as a disruption.

“We don’t teach to tests. We teach for good, solid learning and to Common Core goals. We’re fine with standardized testing, but these tests are awful,” said Sara Greenfield, a third grade teacher at PS 321. “Why do third graders need to sit for three days? They’re done at the end of these tests. They’re totally burnt out.”

The teachers were supported in their protest by the school’s principal, Liz Phillips, who sent a note to parents Thursday. “There was inappropriate content, many highly ambiguous questions, and a focus on structure rather than meaning of passages,” the principal’s note said. “Our teachers and administrators feel that this test is an insult to the profession of teaching and that students’ scores on it will not correlate with their reading ability. “ Read More »

The New York City teachers union on Thursday called for a ban on standardized testing of the state’s youngest students.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said during a conference call with reporters that it was “absurd” that he found himself calling for the ban for students in pre-kindergarten through second grades.

“We did not think anyone would ever think it would be appropriate to standardize test children, many of whom can’t even hold a pencil,” he said. Read More »

Zakiyah Ansari, of New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, speaks at a rally with parents as harder test scores are released by officials.

By Lisa Fleisher and Alison Fox

New York test scores officially released Wednesday showed that less than 3 in 10 city students in third- through eighth-grade are considered proficient in math and English under new, tougher standards set by the state.

The percent of students who scored proficient on the new, harder tests plunged. Overall, 31% of state students in third through eighth grade were proficient in math and reading on the exams this year, down from 65% in math and 55% in English in 2012 on different tests. And just under 30% of city students were proficient in math and 26% in reading.

New York City charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, scored better than city district schools on math with 35% of students considered proficient, but not quite as well on English, where 25% of students were considered proficient.

Charter schools in the city generally serve more impoverished students than the overall city school district but fewer students who have learning disabilities or who are still learning English. Read More »

The city Department of Education is thinking about scrapping a contract with Pearson PLC after the publishing giant said there was another scoring error on gifted-and-talented exams administered this year, officials said Friday.

The city said Pearson miscalculated students’ ages by assuming all students took the test on the same date. The test scores are highly sensitive to students’ precise ages because even a month can make a large difference in the development of young children.

“This failure to complete the basic quality assurance checks Pearson confirmed that they had completed is deeply disturbing,” city schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a prepared statement. “For this reason, the Department of Education is reviewing a variety of options including terminating Pearson’s contract.” Read More »

The city’s Department of Education launched an campaign Monday about testing.

The city’s Department of Education launched an ad blitz Monday to get the message out that students are being held to higher standards, the day before students start taking tougher state tests.

The ads, which will be on the subway and the Staten Island Ferry, come a day before the third- through eighth-graders start taking tests that city and state officials have warned will produce much lower test scores than parents are used to seeing.

The ads are part of an attempt to calm the nerves of jittery parents, who are worried about how students will do on the tougher exams and say the tests put too much pressure on children. Some parents gathered on the steps of City Hall Monday to say they were going to boycott the tests.

The exams will no longer test only for basic skills but instead will require students to think more critically, officials said. Read More »